We have a new favorite toy in our house. Every child in my house (including me) loves these new fangled connecting things!
They are colorful. They are flexible. They are shaped like a hexagon. They can be connected to make 2D toys.
Like aliens
or turned into crowns and connected in the back
They can be connected to make 3D toys.
Like Dragonflies
They are Puzzibits!
While the box they come in is a great way for storing them, our large Organizer bag is doing great with the hundreds of pieces we have so far. We even store some of the toys we’ve made in the bag too. So far we have collected two small 150 piece sets, two medium 300 piece set.
They interconnect in a weave fashion, over and under, making all kinds of neat-o, nifty things to play with.
Seriously, any toy that everyone of my children can enjoy playing with together, you know, all at the same time for hours is a great toy. In all honesty, Bairno just enjoys holding them and playing with the creations his sisters make for him. And while CowBoy does struggle a bit with connecting them in more than a straight line, he is doing quite well with learning how. As a matter of fact, while I am typing this he is playing with them and just showed me that not only has he mastered connecting them in shapes, but has followed the pattern in the included pattern book for part of a bug wing. Bugs! The boxes the Puzzibits come in say for ages 6+. I originally bought some for our six year old, Princerella, to have around and use for some of her Occupational Therapy. She is doing really well with learning how, they are just still a bit hard for her weak dexterity. Now, they children can’t get enough of playing with these neat toys.
It gets real hot here in the south in the summer. It gets up over a hundred degrees. It gets up to 110 degrees on the hottest days. Internet, I do not go out in heat like that. Call me a wuss if you will, but I don’t. I also don’t make my children go out in that heat either. Some time in the sun is good. Some time in the water in the sun is good, but not in that heat. Not in the south. Not with the humidity that we have that gets added to that heat. It ain’t no dry heat around here, Baby.
When I bought these I was thinking about (read: making a list of summer time toys) that we can play with inside that is outside our regular play and toy box ideas. I’m, shall we say, collecting things for us to do during those worst part of the day heat hours. Which is usually around noon to three in the afternoon. There will be Netflix for rainy days as well.
I need a little help with my summer time list of fun indoor (but not limited to indoor) things we can do. But I would never ask for help without offering something in return. I have a little contest/drawing in mind.
Here are the rules:
- The contest begins Monday morning as soon as this posts and ends Friday evening at 5:00pm.
- You must leave me a comment on this post telling me your favorite summer time indoor fun thing to do, game, toy, et cetera.
- One entry per person, but you can leave multiple suggestions or ideas.
- It must not be expensive (read: free to $15.00 tops for all of us to do; we are a family of eight remember.
- Take a picture of your family/children playing the game, or with the toy, or something symbolic of that favorite thing and send it to me in an email (smocklady [ at ] thesmocklady [ dot ] com) to add to my (you can hide or disguise your faces) flickr set for us all to do. I am going to put the winner’s picture up on the blog so everyone can learn something new to do too.
- If you have a blog or flickr account please consider posting about the contest with a link back here. Maybe even do your own little post about your favorite low-cost summer time game or activity and link back here to share the contest love with all your readers.
- The winner will be chosen via a random drawing and be announced next Monday, May 19th.
What will you win?
Your very own set of Puzzibits! Woot! I have here in my hot little hands (Okay, high up on the bookshelf because my darlings are dying to go on a safari) one brand new 450 piece set of Puzzibits. Safari edition.
p.s.
this is not a paid review or advertisement – we just love them and want you to love them too! I’ve added many of the Puzzibit products to our aStore. Purchasing items through our link will help promote more, bigger, and better contests and giveaways. That’s how I paid for this one (and a some school books) – through ads and associate payouts.
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those look awesome!
OH! How about making edible playdoh?! You can make it together, play with it, then eat it!! How fun! There are tons of recipes on the internet!
This is really cheap and easy to do. Buy a roll of duct tape and totally tape up one kid. Make sure you leave the mouth and nose free though so they can breathe.
Then have all the other kids try to untape them. Of course, they cannot use anything sharp to do it. Or, for more fun, tape up ALL the kids at once. Tape them together even.
That’ll keep them busy!
Karen (Pediascribe)s last blog post..THE CAT MUST EARN HIS KEEP
MMM – a pic of your girls eating playdough (make some paper glasses for privacy)
KP – hardy har har har
Now I know it’s only Tuesday, but it is down to just you guys so far, but neither of you put up a picture for me. See Rule #5.
I finally got some ideas!
1. Make 2 teams and give each a roll of toilet paper and some tape. See which team can make the best wedding dress (or whatever else) out of tp. Yes, it’s an old bridal shower game, but I think it has potential.
2. Save old cardboard boxes, paper towel and tp rolls. Make 2 teams and see who can make the tallest or strongest tower. For the strongest tower, see how many books you can stack on top before it falls down.
3. The good old fashioned scavenger hunt. It works inside or out, and give bonus points for all those things you’ve been looking for around the house.
I don’t think I can give you a picture of any of these because Susan is still too young to enjoy them. Wait, I have an idea…
MKs last blog post..The Susan
they look so neat and I just saw them at Target today and we are doing our best to come up with some of our favorite ideas for you…stay tuned :)
another Lori (lorimo)s last blog post..Nature’s Beauty and Fragility
Those are really neat!
Our favorite thing at the present is Lego sets. My boys spend hours playing with them. Unfortunately they aren’t cheap. :-(
Things we have done in the past- built forts with blankets, etc., made a “store” using empty food containers (ok, that was primarily for math practice but they liked it), and made things with bakeable clay. Or you could skip the oven and do air-hardening clay. Just some ideas for you. Board games are touch and go, fun for awhile but not exciting enough for really small ones.
We like to play dominoes (http://www.domino-games.com/domino-rules/chickenfoot-rules.html). I guess if the game didn’t work out you could let the kids set the dominoes up to knock over. :-)
Ok, fine. I’ll play for real. AND I included pictures!
http://www.pediascribe.com/20080515/summer-activity-idea-for-the-smocklady/
Is it ok if I blogged it instead of emailing the pictures to you? I know, I’m such a rebel.
Karen (Pediascribe)s last blog post..SUMMER ACTIVITY IDEA FOR THE SMOCKLADY
KP – so far yo are the only one including pictures. hmmm.
I just ordered 6 games on Amazon dot com for $28.40! Wantnot dot net gave us a heads up on huge game savings!! I also happened to get free shipping on my order!
I haven’t included a pic since we haven’t made the play-doh yet…..
My children like to put on shows. They do skits, sing songs, have puppet shows, etc. The rest of the family takes turns being the audience on the couch. It gives the kids a chance to be creative and get some of that pent-up energy out. Plus, the insane stuff they come up with is always good for a laugh. To up the ante, you could serve popcorn and cokes for the audience to nosh on during the show.
hollies last blog post..Thursday, May 15, 2008
Here are some of our favorite hot summer day activities:
OUTDOOR:
-We set up a couple kiddie pools in the shade and use them in many ways. On an especially hot day we even have a little sprinkler going right next to it to keep us cool. We play games with the pools being the goals and throwing balls into them. We jump in between them. We fill them with water balloons and it is really fun how they float around.
-Speaking of water balloons, we go through a lot of water balloons and usually it is not just throwing them at each other. We play the game where you start right next to each other and toss it to the person and if you catch it you take a step back. My son loves to break them over his own head. The little kids love to play with them almost like a doll and have a lot of fun playing with them floating in the pool. The only downside is the time that it takes to fill them up and picking up all the little pieces afterwards.
-Someone told me this idea and I thought it didn’t sound like so much fun, but the kids loved it. Fill a bucket full of water and give the kids big paint brushes, like the kinds you would use to paint trim with or whatever you have and let them “paint” the sidewalk or deck or whatever with the water. The water changes the color of what they are “painting” and the sun dries it up and they can do it all over again.
INSIDE:
-We like to do crafts a lot. Our favorite craft material is Crayola’s Model Magic clay. It is very foam like and easy to use. I buy it from a craft store when they have a 40% off coupon and buy a huge tube of it. As long as you store the unused open portions in ziploc bags and/or containers it can last for awhile.
-Speaking of foam, my son loves to be creative with foam sheets. They are fun to work with and a bit more interesting to use the construction paper all of the time. He will cut things out and together we use a hot glue gun to put them together-add a couple fuzzy pom poms and popscicle sticks and you are set. I think cutting foam is also a good way to get a different type of fine motor skill practice.
-We loved aquadots before they were recalled…not I guess we will have to go back to fuse beads.
-FORTS! For most of the summer our family room gets a bit rearranged to make room for a fort. The fort has several wings which will house special items.
-We play a lot of games together. One of my favorites is Blokus. One of my son’s favorites is Zooreka. Card games are always a good standby. I wanted to reinforce the multiplication facts that my son is learning so I bought a version of “war” with those facts on it, whichever multiplication fact is higher gets to keep the cards. As a teacher, it would be neat to adapt that with whatever math skill is being worked on.
-This summer my son is going to make a book. I purchased a blank hardcover book from a teacher supply store, of course you could always put together a book as well. We will see what he comes up with.
There are so many more things that we do together, but these are what came to mind. I will send a couple pictures your way.
another Lori (lorimo)s last blog post..Nature’s Beauty and Fragility
when were we little we would cut out a cardboard box like a tv set and stick a wire hanger in the top (my not translate well to current generation) and then take turns performing made up news weather and tv shows while sitting in the box